Review: Help Me, Obi-Wan Kenobi

Cass R. Sunstein is a professor at Harvard Law School, a former official in the Obama administration, an expert in behavioral science and constitutional jurisprudence, and the author of many books, including the best-selling (and somewhat controversial) “Nudge.” He is, in other words, a formidably accomplished intellectual, an authority on matters that lie beyond the ken of most ordinary citizens.

But he is also a regular guy: a son, a father and a big fan of the “Star Wars” movies. His latest book, “The World According to Star Wars,” a kind of lay sermon on a sacred pop-cultural text, tries to fuse the strands of his identity, to bring his intelligence and expertise to bear on a phenomenon that is widely known and easily understood and to use that phenomenon to illuminate more arcane matters. What he has written defies easy categorization in ways that are both admirable and exasperating. This is not a work of high-geek pseudo-scholarship. Nor is it film criticism, social history, psychology or philosophy, though it dabbles in all of those disciplines. It is at once vast and sketchy, an anthology of grand statements, petty quibbles and knowing jokes, organized into 10 “episodes” on subjects that include religion, politics, family dynamics and the nature of human freedom.

Writing in informal, TED-talky prose, Mr. Sunstein comes across as an energetic, friendly dinner-party tablemate, the kind who will do all the talking for both of you. Or maybe, to try a more relevant analogy, as a professor eager to hold the flagging attention of his class with up-to-date references and down-to-earth humor. He wants you to know that he digs Taylor Swift and that he feels sorry for you if you don’t. He cites “wise words from the musician Skrillex.” He’s not afraid to make provocative assertions of his own eclectic taste, wielding laudatory adjectives with downright Trumpian relish. William Blake is “fabulous,” as is J. K. Rowling. Bob Dylan is “terrific.” Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” is “sensational.” The writers Jonathan Lethem and Ray Bradbury are “great,” as are the historian Gordon S. Wood and the political thinker Edmund Burke.

But of course the greatest, most terrific thing, for his present purposes, is “Star Wars” itself, the seven feature films (so far) which, for all their individual flaws, are “cooler, and more awesome” than “Star Trek,” their nearest rival. And that’s not all. “In all of human history,” Mr. Sunstein writes in his introduction, “there has never been a phenomenon like ‘Star Wars.’” “‘Star Wars’ is bipartisan and all-American.” “‘Star Wars’ unifies people.”

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Cass R. SunsteinCreditPhil Farnsworth

It’s hard to determine whether he’s preaching to the choir or howling into the void. His intended audience includes “people who like ‘Star Wars,’ people who love ‘Star Wars,’ and people who neither like nor love ‘Star Wars,’” but this kind of universalism has its pitfalls. One is overreach. It is hard even for the most concise (or profligate) thinker to find something cogent to say about (to cite Mr. Sunstein’s own preliminary and partial list) “the nature of human attachment, whether timing is everything … how boys need their mothers, the workings of the creative imagination, the fall of Communism, the Arab Spring” and a half-dozen other issues.

This is a very short book, and it treats its themes in a glib, haphazard fashion. In the episode called “Thirteen Ways of Looking at ‘Star Wars’” — a compendium of outlandish and interesting interpretations of the movies — Mr. Sunstein muses on the nature of conspiracy theories, riffing in the space of a few paragraphs on Lee Harvey Oswald, psychoanalysis, literary criticism and “The Bible Code” to no evident purpose.

“Don’t Argue,” he teasingly cautions the reader at one point, having offered a (perfectly defensible if also profoundly mistaken) ranking of the seven “Star Wars” movies. But the reader may wish that Mr. Sunstein argued more, or at least more pointedly. Instead, he asks condescending questions (“What do Martin Luther King Jr. and Luke Skywalker have in common?”) to which he supplies answers that sometimes manage to be shallow, tautological and confusing at the same time:

“Martin Luther King Jr. was a rebel, unquestionably a Skywalker, with a little Han and more than a little Obi-Wan. He sought fundamental change, but he well knew the power of the intergenerational link.”

Not all of Mr. Sunstein’s attempts to hold “Star Wars” up as a mirror to society are so flabby. The book improves toward the end, as he gravitates toward the kinds of questions he has been thinking about for much of his career. He looks at how the narrative structure that George Lucas initially envisioned changed over time and finds an enlightening analogy with the ways the Supreme Court has found new meanings in the Constitution. He is perceptive about the way “Star Wars” dramatizes how rebellions take shape and how democracies tumble into dictatorship.

But he also explains too much and too little, and lacks the critical ability to understand which complexities need simplifying and what kinds of simplicity need to be complicated. “It’s a little like air. ‘Star Wars’ is here to stay,” he concludes. “The World According to Star Wars” is also like air, but in a different way.

The World According to Star Wars

By Cass R. Sunstein

223 pages. Dey Street. $21.99

A version of this article appears in print on , Section C, Page 23 of the New York edition with the headline: Please Help Me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe